The History Behind Green Lake’s Grandstand
Green Lake's abandoned Aqua Theater once dazzled
By Jake Laycock July 26, 2016
This article originally appeared in the August 2016 issue of Seattle magazine.
Strolling around Green Lake these days is generally a peaceful pursuit, with most of the action coming from kids playing in the water, kayakers paddling by or the occasional family of ducks flapping around. But at the lake’s southwestern edge, you’ll find the remnants of a historic theater that made a real splash in its day.
The Green Lake Aqua Theater was built to host the Aqua Follies, a whimsical water-dance attraction that took place during the Seafair summer festival from 1950 to 1964. Although the popularity of those “swim-musicals” waned, the theater continued to be used for other entertainment, such as jazz festivals, plays, musicals and concerts, including legendary performances by Led Zeppelin and The Grateful Dead in 1969. That same summer, officials declared the theater’s grandstand unstable, and most of it was dismantled the following year.
Today, only part of the original 5,600-seat grandstand remains, used primarily for fitness follies, with joggers running up and down its stairs, and visitors climbing to the top to take in the view.
PHOTO: Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection, Museum of History and Industry, Seattle. Aqua Follies performers in 1961.
PHOTO: Joe Mabel. Today, only a single section of the original grandstand remains.
Follow Us
AANHPI Month: Where to Celebrate, Eat, and Learn Around Seattle
From festivals and museum exhibits to food tours and historic neighborhoods, here are a few ways to mark the month across the region.
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month—known as AANHPI Month—is observed in the U.S. each May. It began as a weeklong observance in 1978 and expanded to the full month in 1992. Asian, Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities in the United States extend back much further, including to the late 16th century, when…
Black Panther Park in Skyway Becomes First Black Panther Park in the World
The new community garden honors the Black Panther Party’s legacy of food justice and the Skyway neighbors who helped bring it to life.
On a sunny Sunday earlier this month, at the corner of 75th Avenue and Renton Avenue South, the community gathered for the opening of Skyway’s Black Panther Park. Inspired by the Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for School Children program that compelled the federal government to provide breakfast in schools, Black Panther Park is a community…
Rearview Mirror: A Family Coming Apart, SIFF, and My First Fashion Show
Things I did, saw, ate, learned, or read in the past week (or so).
The Family House A house can hold a lot, and Seattle Rep’s Appropriate knows that. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Tony-winning play, directed here by Timothy McCuen Piggee, drops the Lafayette siblings into their late father’s hoarded, falling-apart Arkansas plantation home for an estate sale, and lets the whole thing crack open from there. The sibling dynamics are…
Studio Sessions: Raili Jänese
The Kirkland painter brings a playful eye to daily life and the little rituals of being human.
Artist Raili Jänese pays close attention to the small stuff. It might be a goose on the move, a rabbit in the yard, or a person lost in the rituals of coffee or cooking. The Estonian-born artist, now based in Kirkland, makes colorful acrylic works that turn everyday behavior—human and animal alike—into something funny and…